The manufacture of container preforms from recycled plastic material, in particular PET flakes, requires a very heat-intensive process. Moreover, the provision of recycled plastic material, in particular PET flakes, requires enormous heat supply to decontaminate the plastic material and optionally carry out an SSP treatment for processing. The SSP treatment is a standard process known in the field of PET plastic technology and means that an influence on the molecular chain (extension, shortening or maintenance) is performed (solid state polycondensation), i.e. a heat treatment over a certain period. Decontamination and SSP treatment can be carried out in a recycling machine in one reactor or in separate reactors, as is disclosed in DE 10 2005 013 701 A1. Decontamination is performed e.g. with hot gas, for example air or nitrogen, where heat is supplied via different heat transfer media until temperatures of, for example, between 100° C. and 180° C. are reached. The SSP treatment is carried out e.g. under subatmospheric pressure conditions, where temperatures up to at most the melting temperature of the plastic material of 150° C. to 250° C., preferably between 170° C. and 210° C. are set. The SSP treatment can run in an inert gas atmosphere, e.g. using nitrogen or carbon dioxide. In the recycling machine known from DE 10 2005 013 701 A1, after the SSP treatment, the recycled plastic material is cooled in a cooling reactor to a temperature between 50° C. and 100° C., preferably even to below 70° C., i.e. to a temperature below the second order transition temperature of the plastic material. For cooling, a cooling coil, a vibratory hopper conveyor, or a fluidized reactor, or another cooling device can be used, for example by supplying ambient air. Although at least the SSP treatment can be carried out in batches, by a multi-part SSP reactor arrangement, a quasi continuous discharge of recycled plastic material can be achieved. The recycled plastic material cooled to below 65° C. is then fed to a preform machine, or it is optionally previously completely cooled to room temperature. In the preform machine, the recycled plastic material then must be reheated to be able to produce the preforms.